Nervous Recovery - A Naitomea Science Fiction Thriller
by YukieTenjou
Summary: Perhaps it is not the eyes that are the gateway to the soul, but instead, something much more discreet and hidden.
1. Chapter 1

**Note to the readers- I'm using Nightmare's real names in this story for a more down-to-earth and personal effect. For those of you who don't know their real names, they are as follows:**

**Hitsugi - Mitsuo Ikari**

**Sakito - Takahiro Sakaguchi**

**Ni~ya - Yuuji Baba**

**Ruka - Satoru Kano**

**Yomi - Jun Chiba**

**Also note that this story contains violence, peril, bad language, and crude humor. **

**I hope you enjoy Nervous Recovery. **

_Over thirty years ago, a man named Gerald Remann was on the verge of discovering a scientific breakthrough. His works are kept secret, and hidden deep in the archives of England's experimental history. His goal is unknown. His project altogether is unknown. All that is known about him is that he was a genius. And he died with his life's work unfinished. _

I don't really believe in past lives. I don't believe much in any of that spiritual hubbub... To me it seems like a waste of time. I never really worried about it, honestly. Blah blah. Death, heaven, hell, afterlife, whatever. Doesn't matter much to me... Never sparked my interest. It's just one of those things that people worry about too much, the way I see it. I'm here now, and I'm alive. I have lots of things to deal with without worrying about death.

Basically, that's what I've always thought about that.

Here it is. Prepare yourself. The cliche line; _until recently._

Dreams of a hermit man plagued me all through the past six months leading up to Christmas.

Pacing back and forth in a room with a throbbing pain in my chest and left arm as well as my diaphragm, I would panic in this dream, muttering nonsense in some other language and looking back and forth at stacks of papers and diagrams and books, mostly musty old journals. Scribbling things down in other languages, I paced around and whimpered with my hands on my head. Nothing I said was in my voice. My hands didn't look like my hands. Nothing really belonged to me in this dream. But the feeling was still there.

It was the third night in a row that I'd had that dream. Today was the day after Christmas, and straight back to work the band went. I was the first to make it to the rehearsal studio. For a while I napped, not taking note when Jun entered, but when Takahiro limped into the room with a dreary sense about him, I awakened. Rubbing his neck, the blonde let out a whine.

"Hah, man, I'm aching all over..." the dirty blonde sighed as he plopped down on the couch in the studio.

"Sakito-Kun, nani?" Jun asked, cocking his head with his mischievous smile. I sat up on the couch across the room and observed quietly as the guitarist shook his head back and forth with a sigh.

"I tried this weird new thing... Really underground. It's like... How do I put it?" He shook his head again and stared at the ceiling.

"Anal with an American hooker?" Jun piped up.

I laughed. "That's not new, where have you been?"

"Shush, guys, my head is killing meeee," Takahiro managed.

Impatiently, I uncrossed my legs. "Well, don't leave us hanging, Taka. What was it?"

"It was like a sci-fi movie... My friend told me about this kind of therapy involving lots of needles-" I could immediately see Jun's aura change from perky and energetic to focused and intrigued. "-that they stick in really deep into various places..."

"Wait, you let some strangers running an underground type therapy stick needles into you just because your friend did it?" Appearing horrified, the vocalist blinked several times.

"Listen, listen," Taka continued, "it's really cool. They find your natural rhythm through your nerves and stuff, and, like... I don't know how they do it, they use science stuff."

"What is the point of this...?" I asked skeptically, meanwhile Jun looked purely disturbed.

"I'm getting to it," Takahiro moaned, "spare me the criticism. I'm not exactly able to get my speech together."

"That's understandable."

With a few minutes of him laying there on the couch, the sore man finally managed to compose himself. "They explained it like... If rebirth really exists, then a soul has to travel from one body as it dies to the body of someone being born. The spirit affects the growth of a person only minutely, in small, small scales, and not in ways that are very easily detectable... but no matter who your parents are or who died when you were born, nerves will grow differently, right?"

I nodded.

"Well these people think that nerves are like... the gateway to the soul's mysteries. It sounds stupid coming from me, but they seriously are deep into that stuff... And what's weirdest is that after the therapy session, I went home and knocked out, and the next morning I was searching for my cane, my bra, and my daughter Cecilia."

There was a pause in the room.

"Uh... Taka... You don't have a cane, boobs, or a daughter," Jun noted.

"Exactly!" the guitarist exclaimed, pointing at Jun. "Ten points to Yomi, he follows through!"

"So wait, what you're saying is that you went to this place to have people stab you with thin metal sticks and the next morning you forgot that you're a thirty year old Asian dude?" I ridiculed in disbelief. "Are you sure they didn't just load you up with roofies and LSD?"

"Even though that would explain my headache, I'm pretty sure I'm drug free," he said.

"I don't believe it."

"Why don't you visit them? I'll make a bet with you."

"I don't really want to lose my sanity, thanks though, Taka."

"I'll be with you the whole time. I'm serious, it's cool."

"It doesn't sound cool..."

"I'll give you 10,000 yen if you go through with it and tell me it's not cool."

"10,000, huh?"

"10,000."

I bit the inside of my cheek. "You know, that's a lot of money, but what's in the experience for me? I don't wanna go off of just a bribe."

"It's kind of cool thinking of people you used to know in a past life. Besides, even if you don't continue with it, it's hardcore. Something you can say you did."

"Satoru," I heard Jun whisper, "Yolo!"

I didn't like how Takahiro called the place a "clinic" only once we were almost there. The word on its own makes me think of insane asylums and all those hospital scenes in horror movies. Of course, I said nothing about this to Takahiro. Maybe it was stupid to take a bet like that just for the hell of it, but come to think of it, I was just a little curious.

"So, you've given me, like, no info on this at all. You said something about needles, am I right?" I prodded at Taka with a poker face, trying to hide my concern.

"Yeah," he nodded.

"So, uh, this is a drug-induced thing?" I asked carefully.

"Mm... No, it's not. It just involves the use of needles. It's like hardcore acupuncture. But not really."

Squinting at him and dropping my lower lip, I spat, "What the hell is that supposed to mean!?"

Takahiro chuckled. "Loosen up a bit, will you? They put needles symmetrically in places like your arms and back as, like... I don't know what to say about it, they teach it to you when you're there."

I don't know what I was supposed to think or do when guides took us from the lobby into a room where there was something resembling a horizontal rack suspended from cables in the ceiling and cylinders in the floor coupled with roughly twenty stationary syringe-like pistons attached to mechanical arms all around it. I mean, stepping into the room, my thoughts were mostly a cross between "Oh God what the fuck" and "Looks kinky," but what is someone supposed to _think_ of that sort of contraption being displayed to them like it were normal?

People in white coats all stood around it, and looked with a shimmer in their eyes at me, soft smiles on their lips. When I realized that they all appeared to be expecting me, I turned on my heels and walked right back out of the room. Then I started laughing.

Poor Takahiro looked very concerned with me, and his round lower lip protruded softly as he pondered what to ask me first.

"I'm sorry, I was just surprised. You didn't tell me it looked like a torture dungeon."

"Nobody's forcing you. If you don't wanna try it, you don't have to," Taka consoled me.

"No, but now I'm so damn curious!"

~end part 1~


	2. Chapter 2

**This fiction contains strong language, peril, and bizarre situations that some may find disturbing. **

**To make a more personal effect, I have chosen to use the band members' real names in this story. For those of you who don't know Nightmare members' real names, here is the list:**

**Sakito - Takahiro Sakaguchi**

**Ni~ya - Yuuji Baba**

**Yomi - Jun Chiba**

**Ruka - Satoru Kano**

**Hitsugi - Mitsuo Ikari**

**I hope you enjoy Nervous Recovery. **

~part 2 start~

I peeked through the door at the hell hammock again, taking a deep breath, and letting it out in a short puff.

"So this is... Eh?" I cautiously looked at the door, and saw the doctors glancing awkwardly back at each other, one leaning up against the black counter as if he'd failed at his job. I peeked at the machine again... Each of the needles were attached to a wire that led into something that looked like a supercomputer.

"You didn't give them half a chance to describe everything to you," Takahiro laughed at me.

"I didn't know how to react. Should I go back in...?" I asked in bewilderment.

Takahiro nodded, saying, "If you at least introduce yourself, they'll explain everything to you."

So I did as he said. I was ridiculously nervous, and everything seemed to be blurry. Most of my replies were "Uh-huh," and "Wait, what?" but I managed to catch the following from a dorky looking guy with glasses thicker than both my thumbs put together:

"What this machine does is measure your reaction time through puncturing several areas of the body with sensitive nerves such as multiple areas in the neck, back, shoulders, chest, arms, and legs. This doesn't harm the nerves, mind you. The information is recorded and EMF waves are sent through the air to try and find you a match with an entity. Possession is not common, and likely won't happen to you, but in the event that it does, we'll end the procedure."

I turned to Takahiro. "This is a joke, right?"

Taka shook his head, and then screwed up his mouth and shrugged.

I turned back to the doctor. "Continue I guess."

The man nodded.

"Some bruising is common after the testing is through with. What we'll do is we'll have you lay here in your shorts," the man patted the curved bars I was to lay on, "and we'll apply a topical anesthetic to the puncture points once they're determined. That way you won't feel it as they go in."

"Needles," I groaned, cringing.

The cruel reminder of their existence caused me to glance at them, making a note that the man's glasses were only slightly thicker than the sharp metal.

It's not like me to take interest in these things. I don't _like_ these things. But before I knew it, they had my consent and I was stripped to my boxers and on my back in the grizzly contraption. My wrists were strapped down, as well as my ankles, and my waist, and my neck. Basically everything was strapped down so tight I couldn't move an inch. One of the nurses grabbed my hand firmly, and another moved my hair out of the way and wiped the surface with alcohol before he dabbed a chemical on the back of my neck.

"Can you feel this?" he asked. I heard a slight tapping, but felt nothing.

"Nope. My neck feels cold."

"Okay. I need you to take a deep breath, alright?" one of the scientists said, and the woman holding my hand squeezed tighter.

"This can't be good..." I muttered, then taking a deep breath as he asked. The breath turned into more of a sharp gasp as a hard wave of pain sliced into my head like someone had shot me at point blank with a harpoon gun. "Gah! Fuck!" I hollered. Across the room, Takahiro visibly flinched. That was when a headache hit me that had me convinced that someone just threw a grenade into my skull. Squeezing my eyes shut, I hissed in several shallow breaths. I was shaking, and unconsciously, I had grabbed the nurse's hand tighter than I thought was even possible for me.

"You're doing great, that part's over."

Encouraging words didn't help when I was pretty sure I was going to literally lose my head.

"I need you to picture something for me, something easy and simple."

"What the hell am I supposed to picture?" I managed, eyes still squeezed shut.

"Something not too complex. Something like a shape."

I did as he asked, visualizing a Rubik's Cube in my mind, and to my surprise, the doctor chuckled. "Not as simple as I expected, but a shape is a shape. I hated those puzzles as a kid."

I managed to open my left eye slightly despite the pounding headache. "What the hell...? You can see..." I couldn't even bring myself to finish the sentence.

"We're gonna prep you for the second part of this procedure, and we'll only continue once you're ready."

The nurses around me scurried back and forth, taking cotton balls with alcohol and swabs with a small amount of gel on the tips and dabbing them at many points over my body, which quickly numbed and felt cold. That was more or less when it really hit me that I was going to have various points all over my body punctured, and needles tapping against all the strongest nerves in my body. Fuck. How did I get here again?

The space in between my shoulders, my actual shoulders, my upper arms, my elbows, my wrist, my mid back, my lower back, the sides of my thighs, my knees, and my ankles were all the places I could count that there were dabs of numbing agent put, followed by needles positioned at the direct point where they were to puncture.

"I don't like this," I groaned.

"You've got ink, so you can't be that scared of needles," one of the male nurses teased, pointing to my tattooed arm.

"Notice how I have no other tattoos," I growled.

"Are you ready to continue?" the female nurse grasping my hand asked.

I wanted to nod, but I was now being impaled at the neck by a needle, so I just blinked several times in an attempt to open my eyes and looked at her. "Yeah... Just do it."

"Alright," the main doctor said. "Let's make this happen."

An ominous whirring filled the room, and I saw the mechanical arms with the wire-holstered needles drift closer to my body as I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling a slight pressure on every numb part of my body. Then all the sounds stopped.

"Okay, I need you to take a deep breath and hold it when I say, okay?"

"Alright," I said.

"Alright. Deep breath right now."

I inhaled at his command.

"Hold it for just a moment..."

The pressure I felt on my body became greater, and opened my eyes just a slit... Slowly, the needles were pressing in. I squeezed my eyes shut again and waited for his word.

"Okay, great job, now let it out."

I sighed immediately, only to hear him speak another word of warning:

"Now I need you to stay as still as you can."

A mere moment later, each pressured point on my body was exposed to a pain that felt like a burning electric shock, and all I could do was sit there with my body more tensed than it had ever been, air caught in my throat. My heart was racing, I wasn't able to scream. The pain I felt was in jolts, running all up and down my body with the beat of my heart.

"Very good. This is the worst part, so just hold on."

I could only cry out, "Make it end."

It felt like the room was shaking as I heard what sounded like a sewing machine and shrieked at the top of my lungs. I felt as if someone had dropped a toaster into a bath while it was already full of boiling water, and I couldn't believe how something like this could even be a real feeling.

Then there was silence again, but I wasn't through with. The needles were pressed up against the nerves inside me still.

"You're doing great. Just breathe, Satoru." If it weren't for the lull of the female nurse's voice, I would have lost my mind.

I felt the needles moving again, slowly now, back, and then forward again, then all the way back out from my skin, whimpers tearing from my throat. Before I felt the blood dripping down my appendages, the nurses applied bandages. The needles were out now, but I was exhausted. Soft pained noises escaped my lips as if I were a child sick with a fever. My lower lip trembled and a hot tear pooled in the corner of my eye. With a spasm in my wrist, I realized that the pain had distracted me so much that my grip on the woman's hand had gone limp.

"It's over...?" I managed in a broken whisper.

"Only one more step," the doctor pronounced.

Cold hands slipped onto my collarbone.

"Doc, what are you doing...?" I choked out.

"I'm entering information on the computer here," he replied. His voice was still several feet away from me.

"Who's touching me?"

Silence took the room a third time in the form of a long shocked pause.

"Doctor," one of the male nurses whispered, "we weren't prepared for this."

"Prepared for what!?" I hollered, snapping my eyes open.

Above me was a shimmering figure, a specter, arms outstretched... hands on my collarbone.

"What are you getting, doc?" one of the nurses urged.

"He's seeing something. It's there. I'm engaging the link."

"Link!? What the hell do you mean!? Don't trap me with this! I've seen horror movies you know! This can't end we-"

Before the last word escaped my mouth, my entire body became cold and spasmed to the extent it could in the restraints. Normally people just say they "see" things go dark when they pass out, but I didn't just see it. I _felt_ everything go dark.

The extent of the feeling was as though I had already died.


End file.
